General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPierce: Republicans Who Ran on 'Government Is Bad' Are Now the Government
Before we begin, let us all stipulate to two facts: 1) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is good at one thing and one thing only: obstructing a Democratic president; and 2) Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin, is a truly terrible politician on almost every level on which one can be a terrible politician, but especially as a legislative leader. God, John Boehner must laugh over his lawn mower every morning these days...
This is what you got elected to handle. Some of this stuffthe debt ceiling, the budgetare the everyday responsibilities of every Congress and, because we all live on planet Earth, where unanticipated weather events are fairly common among the natives, that's part of why you got elected, too. God, they're a mess, in the House especially. Half their caucus is made up of jumped-up county commissioners, gibbering Bible-banging fanatics, and jamokes gobbling Alex Jones brain pills with both hands. Ryan can't control them any more than Boehner could. It is unseemly for a Speaker to work with a whip and a chair.
Unfortunately for Ryan, and for the rest of us, this cry of loons scares the half-sane portion of his caucus to death, so it wields an unusual amount of power for a collection of crazy people...
We've been through this conundrum before, during SuperStorm Sandy and, before that, during Hurricane Katrina. Texas senators John Cornyn and Tailgunner Ted Cruz have been taking some heat for comments they made concerning the relief package for Sandy, and a 2005 quote from then-Congressman Mike Pence was making the rounds Tuesday. "Congress must ensure that a catastrophe of nature does not become a catastrophe of debt for our children and grandchildren," Pence said. To paraphrase the blog's First Law of Economics: Fck the Deficit. People got no homes. People got no money.
We are living through an even more vivid case study of what happens when a political movement runs against politics, and when members of the government are installed in the government on the principle that government is bad. Paralysis is inevitable. Sooner or later, the absurdity of it all becomes unsupportable. If you are very lucky, that moment comes without a body count. We are not very lucky these days.
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a57260/republicans-congress-debt-ceiling-harvey/
Iliyah
(25,111 posts)it's bad.
Initech
(100,076 posts)Republicans who hate the government now run it - and they're doing a really shitty job of it.
mcar
(42,331 posts)and give tax cuts to rich people.
Jack1963
(31 posts)And now they can and will say they were correct!